Ponce Piano Works on Grand Piano

Cover of the first Grand Piano release of piano music by Manuel Ponce (courtesy of Naxos of America)

It was only yesterday that I first learned that, back in April of 2013, Grand Piano launched a project to record the complete piano works of the twentieth-century Mexican composer Manuel Ponce. I learned this because the third volume in this project has been scheduled for release later this month. As a result, I decided that I should listen to the first two volumes prior to writing about the latest release.

Like many of my generation, I first became aware of Ponce through the recordings of guitarist Andrés Segovia. Segovia devoted an entire album to Ponce, recording three of his sonatas, all composed in the Twenties of the last century. The earliest of these, “Sonata mexicana” was composed in 1923, followed by “Sonata clásica” (an homage to the nineteenth-century composer Fernando Sor) in 1928 and “Sonata romántica” (another homage, this time to Franz Schubert) in 1929.

Until I learned about the Grand Piano releases, I knew nothing about Ponce’s compositions for solo piano. The performer on the initial albums is pianist Álvaro Cendoya, leading me to believe that he will be responsible for all future volumes as well. The most extended composition on the first volume, which was released in the spring of 2013, was a sonatina consisting of three short movements, the first being the longest with a duration less than six minutes. Similar brevity was encountered on the second volume, released in May of 2017, which featured two suites, both of which had an overall duration of less than a quarter of an hour. The earlier of these, the three-movement Suite Cubana, was composed in 1916. This predates Ponce’s time in Paris during the Twenties, which seems to be where the sonatina was composed (along with those aforementioned guitar sonatas).

On the other hand, through the acquaintances that Ponce formed in Paris, he became aware of polytonality. His own explorations led to several new works, among them the Suite bitonal, which he composed 1929, near the end of his time in Paris. It is worth noting that, while the movements of Suite Cubana have Spanish titles with connotations of Cuba, the movement titles of Suite bitonal reflect on the suite movements encountered in the seventeenth century.

The second volume is also distinguished for having the longest single movement encountered in the first two volumes. This is the opening track of “Rapsodia Cubana,” composed in 1914. The extensive and ornate embellishments on what are presumably traditional Cuban themes suggests that Ponce wanted to give Hispanic music the same sort of treatment what Franz Liszt summoned up for Hungarian sources.

When the first volume was released, the back cover claimed that it was “the first of eight volumes devoted to Ponce’s complete piano music.” If that is the case, then the “Piano works” list on Ponce’s Wikipedia page will fall markedly short of a “complete” account. That being so, Cendoya’s project is likely to involve scholarly research as well as the development of suitable interpretation techniques for Ponce’s music.